Hynix, Numonyx and Phison to Jointly Develop NAND Flash Controllers.

Hynix Semiconductor, Numonyx B.V. and Phison Electronics Corp. on Wednesday announced that they had signed a collaboration agreement to jointly develop controllers for the next generation of managed-NAND solutions based on the newly released JEDEC eMMC 4.4 industry specification. The collaboration will help the three companies to strengthen their presence on the market of premium applications.

“Through this collaboration, 3 parties expect to enhance its technology leadership of the NAND flash solutions. Also, this will help Hynix to expand its market share by diversifying its NAND flash products to premium application products such as microSD, eMMC, and SSD,” said Min-goo Choi, Hynix senior vice president of corporate strategy office.

Under this agreement, Phison, Hynix and Numonyx will leverage their respective competencies to develop controllers used in combination with a variety of NAND flash products. Phison will exclusively supply the jointly developed controllers to Hynix and Numonyx, which will enhance their respective NAND flash memory solutions portfolio.

eMMC is an embedded non-volatile memory system, comprising both flash memory and a flash memory controller. The new MMC V4.4 standard features numerous enhancements including a doubling of the memory interface performance, flexible partition management and improved security options.

“Standard interfaces like eMMC are becoming a common requirement for NAND flash memory systems used in next 3G+ mobile platforms. This agreement will allow Numonyx to bring its system-level expertise to provide compelling system solutions for our customers and partners,” said Marco Dallabora, Numonyx vice president and general manager of the wireless business group.

Products combining the jointly developed controllers by Phison and NAND flash memory from Numonyx and Hynix are expected to be available before the end of the year.

All three companies have a successful history of collaboration with each other.